Composite materials have been used increasingly in a variety of industries, including the automotive, marine and aerospace industries. In some instances, composite parts can be formed using automated composite material application machines, such as composite tape lamination machines or composite fiber placement machines.
Some existing composite material application machines, for example, a flat tape lamination machine (FTLM) or a contoured tape lamination machine (CTLM), can be capable of producing flat or gently contoured composite parts by laying relatively wide strips of composite tape onto generally horizontal or vertical tooling surfaces, such as a mandrel. Other existing composite material application machines, for example, an automated fiber placement (AFP) machine, can be capable of producing generally cylindrical or tubular composite parts by wrapping relatively narrow strips of composite tape, or tows, around a rotating manufacturing tool, such as a mandrel.
Generally, existing automated composite material application machines have a single composite material application head. Correspondingly, existing composite material application machine programming systems generally are capable of producing a numerical control (NC) or computer numerical control (CNC) program designed to control a single composite material application machine having a single composite material application head.
In order to more efficiently produce relatively large composite parts, including aircraft fuselage sections, a high-rate, multihead, composite material application machine has been conceived. As conceived, the multihead composite material application machine should be capable of manufacturing a wide variety of composite parts, such as flat spars, stringer charges, wing skins and fuselage barrel sections, as well as composite parts in other industries, such as the automotive, marine, industrial vehicle and prefabricated architectural structure industries.
However, existing composite part programming systems do not have the capacity to efficiently program a composite material application machine with multiple composite material application heads to form a variety of composite parts. Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a method and apparatus that can efficiently produce a composite part program for a high-rate composite material application machine with multiple composite material application heads to form a variety of composite parts without requiring excessive manual programming.